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Comment by jcdreads | Hacker News Reader

XKCD Explained is much better -- because it has the right perspective; it's explaining the comics to people who already understand them, shitting on the author and his idiot audience.

XKCD is a condescending comic whose audience revels in its own perceived superiority, while any self-respecting nerd with a real sense of humor knows that putting a science or technology reference in a cartoon is not a joke in itself.

The main point for me, is that XKCD used to be funny, insightful and reasonably accessible.

These days it rarely achieves all three.

(Shame you're being down-voted, I suppose hell hath no fury like a nerd scorned ...)

You're very wrong about XKCD. There's a whole slew of un-funny techy strips, "User Friendly" being the canonical example. XKCD by comparison is often hilarious. The fact that it requires inside knowledge and targets a specific audience does not automatically make it unfunny, nor does it make anyone who enjoys it "revel in their superiority".

perhaps rogerclark is referring to this comic alone; it indeed seems to offer a technical reference as the sole point of humor, at least in the final frame.

Although I do enjoy frame 3 on its own merits.

Grammatically that is clearly not what he meant unless he is not a native English speaker and thus not aware of the finer points of article usage, but I doubt that.

Oh my god. Irony is beautiful.

I don't think you know what irony means.

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